“I’m not making any bones about it…I’ve got lots to say,” Dylan Moran promises, as he discusses his new comedy show We Got This.
“It’s still coming together though,” he adds. “I mean, I’ve got masses and masses of material…tonnes of stuff. Don’t ask me questions about organisation, or knowing or planning because there’s nothing to talk about…it doesn’t exist! And it’s never existed with me, it’s just a river of stuff.”
Moran’s wild stream-of-consciousness style that made him such a hit on the stand-up circuit, becoming the second youngest person to win the Perrier Comedy Award aged just 24 at the Edinburgh Festival in 1996, is still in evidence then.
“people come for a kind of ‘one o’clock at a kitchen table’ kind of thing Rather than just belting out gags”
So is that intentional? “From what people have said to me over the years, people come for a kind of ‘one o’clock at a kitchen table’ kind of thing. Rather than just belting out gags, which is not really my thing.”
Either way, Moran is desperate to play in front of people again, fuelled by the past two years of Covid. “We are bruised. We are all sore,” he says. “It’s not just the pandemic. It’s the times and how we’ve got through it.”
But one thing’s for sure – the post-pandemic universe has left Moran bursting with new things to address. “I’m crazy with all this stuff,” he grins. And what better topic for the Irish comedian and his sideways glance at the folly of modern-day life than Covid.
“I just want to carry on working to be honest with you”
“I think everybody has to get themselves into a place where they could look forward to something,” he says. “And so we are there now, and that’s what I’m gonna talk about.”
So how does the Irish comedian, feel about being back on tour? “I like a live room – a room where you can feel people, they bring a swagger and swing to the event themselves.”
Not that Moran hasn’t been busy over the past few years, writing Stuck for the BBC, which has just finished shooting in Belfast. “It’s all about couples. It’s all about relationships, and about desire and fear and inhabiting your life. Going for what you want. Going for the big prizes in life – love and commitment, a commitment to being here, to really being here, to really living your life,” he explains.
Moran also recently starred in The Witcher: Blood Origin for Netflix, playing the fabulously-named Uthrok One-Nut. “I was one tile in a very big mosaic,” he says, “it was great, seeing the production. It was like a Cecil B. DeMille scale, when you looked at it…people running everywhere.”
And with Black Books, the Channel 4 show that ran for three seasons between 2000 and 2004 and won him two BAFTA awards, gaining him a new following since appearing on Netflix, Moran is back in a big way.
“I think everybody has to get themselves into a place where they can look forward to something”
“Listen, if anybody enjoyed anything, I’m thrilled. Always. I really am. I mean that because that’s the whole point of it. On some level, I’m pleased to have a satellite up there. But I’m really focused on what I’m doing here. And the work that’s going on right now, obviously. I mean, I just want to carry on working to be honest with you.”
And yet it’s We Got This that is at the forefront of his mind and how the audience needs to get on board. “It’s not an object that I haul there like it’s a grand piano. It’s a thing that’s made when the audience arrives as well.”
So be prepared when Moran strides on stager at Oxford’s New Theatre on Wednesday March 30. “I’m crazy with all this stuff,” he grins. “I’m not making any bones about it…I’ve got lots to say.”
Dylan Moran ‘We Got This UK Tour’. March 30. Oxford New Theatre. https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/dylan-moran/new-theatre-oxford/
